Whining
So. You know those spray cans with fake snow you can buy to molest the corners of your windows and play white christmas make-belief? Yeah. I won't be needing those this year.
Oh, it's a white christmas all right. My bike has been nothing but arm-decoration lately since I don't dare to ride it anymore. And because one of the brakes is broken and I think some other parts have frozen or fallen off.. Which is a bit of a shame because it's not like I could use any means of public transport. They instantly abandoned all signs of life at the sighting of the first snowflake. Which means that there's barely any trains from my city to, well, anywhere else in the country. They seem to be a bit confused about this themselves too since a few days ago I waited over 10 minutes to cross a railroad and NO TRAIN came. Complete anti-climax. Caused a small-scale traffic jam, too.
Anyway. Since snowfall like this (40cm) only happens here once every 35 years or so, my parents car isn't equipped with winter tires. Which would make picking me up a rather adventurous business. Hence I am still stuck home by myself on christmas eve. Luckily I don't care much for christmas. Excluding my dads cooking, that is. (They better be able to pick me up tomorrow or I'll make them save me portions..) Hence I have the time and opportunity to do some journaling again. You must be overjoyed.
First of all: yes, I made the deadline. With a 10 minute margin. Seems like me and deadlines have gotten a lot closer lately (ouch, bad pun, i know). Too close for comfort if you ask me though, I was shaking like a leaf and it took me 15 minutes of despair before I noticed that my printer wasn't working because I hadn't connected the usb-cable to my pc. Right. Let's pretend that never happened. Like the day that I thought I could heat something up in the microwave. Wrapped in aluminium. Luckily I was still able to catch the alarming, yet quite awesome sight of a miniature lightning flashing inside. Yeah. Like I said, that didn't happen.
What did happen. I got hooked up in the library. Oh, the joys of studying. I was innocently minding my business behind my laptop and a rather impressive stack of books. A guy walks by and throws a small crumple of paper on my desk. I think: gee, is it really that hard to throw it in the dustbin instead? And go back to my books. Then it catches my attention again. Because it is laying rather close to my stuff. And I see it isn't a crumple. It's actually neatly folded. At this point alarm bells start going off in my head. Sirens wailing, I try to get back to my studying. But I'm completely distracted. I don't want to pick it up because then again, it's not laying ON my stuff, and the other people studying at the table also saw him throwing that thing. I have my sense of privacy about these things. I try to ignore it and go back to studying. By then I was getting completely paranoid and thought it might be a message telling me my cleavage was showing. So eventually, a good unproductive 30 minutes later, curiosity got the best of me and I sneakily inconspicuously got a hold of the damn thing and made for the toilets. I will relay you now the message verbatim. "Hey, I like your style and you seem to be nice. If you ever feel having a coffee, send me an email. <email>"
.. HOW LONG HAS THIS GUY BEEN WATCHING ME?! Wah. I was completely paranoid the rest of the day and kept staring at all the guys to see if they were staring at me. Yeah, real smooth. I won't deny I was slightly flattered, though shock prevailed. These things actually still happen? And even more incredible: to me? I think dumbstruck would be the correct term. And also incredulous, because I hadn't had the chance to see the guy and how would I say email yes if I hadn't even talked to him? Plus, his email gave away that he was German. I know I am normally more open-minded but in my city there is a particular gap between Dutch and German students. Nobody really understands why, yet it is widely acknowledged. And imho they ARE annoying. This whole holier-than-thou attitude while hogging the best studying spots for each other and cheating spots in the row in front of the copy machine. Too stuck up to come party in the city but instead holding house parties all over the city making an incredible amount of noise at incredible early hours. (I can vouch for this. Had German roommates). It's a small city, but we clearly hang at different places. The only place we have to really co-exist is the library. Oh joy. By accident I was once too early at the library and got to experience this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuT9f2cVzT8
It was seriously violent, I got pulled along and just about managed to step aside into an empty spot. Pff. I nearly felt like proclaiming I was there early just by accident and most certainly wasn't a part of this. And I can tell you I didn't hear a word of Dutch around me. Just english and french and german. And my clothes still smelled of their cigarettes after I finally got to my spot. Ah well, what was my point again? Oh, right, Dutch and German don't mix. Unless otherwise forced. So I'm not going to go into this note. Because I really kind of have other things on my mind than guys right now and you'd have to be damn good to convince me otherwise and this just isn't cutting it. Did I already mention he's German?
I think you've already noticed I've been doing quite ok lately save for the study stress. Since even my journaling is less frazzled and more coherent (or so I'd like to think). I'm still caught between figuring out what's good for me without living like a complete nun, and being aware of what's going on with my moods without becoming paranoid at every moment of joy or lethargy. But I was able to work on my essays and think clearly again. I hope I can regain some confidence this way. I was able to experience again how much fun it all is and that I'm not half bad at it. The cruel nature of bp is though that it let's you sniff at these things without knowing how long it'll last. Having these normal things taken from me again and again has made me a bit weary. That doesn't mean I won't make the most of it while it lasts. And I'm completely appreciative now of things I didn't bother paying attention to before. Like being able to do laundry. Heck, cleaning in general. And keeping in touch with friends. And studying when you're supposed to. I guess I've grown some discipline and sensibility. Last night I was at the association's pub with my committee and even though I theoretically could get wasted since I have 2 weeks to recover, after a while I switched back to tea. It just didn't feel right. I still had fun, though it's always a bit strange to be the only moderately sober person when everyone is completely wasted. You start to feel like the weird one yourself. Sensibility really is overrated in a sense though, so I vouch to be completely insensible with new years eve.
I was going to talk about some more trivial and some more deep stuff but seeing as how DAMN long this post has already gotten, I will save this for later. It will be more positive. I promise. Anticipate and rejoice. And in case I hadn't reached you yet: Merry Christmas!
Oh, it's a white christmas all right. My bike has been nothing but arm-decoration lately since I don't dare to ride it anymore. And because one of the brakes is broken and I think some other parts have frozen or fallen off.. Which is a bit of a shame because it's not like I could use any means of public transport. They instantly abandoned all signs of life at the sighting of the first snowflake. Which means that there's barely any trains from my city to, well, anywhere else in the country. They seem to be a bit confused about this themselves too since a few days ago I waited over 10 minutes to cross a railroad and NO TRAIN came. Complete anti-climax. Caused a small-scale traffic jam, too.
Anyway. Since snowfall like this (40cm) only happens here once every 35 years or so, my parents car isn't equipped with winter tires. Which would make picking me up a rather adventurous business. Hence I am still stuck home by myself on christmas eve. Luckily I don't care much for christmas. Excluding my dads cooking, that is. (They better be able to pick me up tomorrow or I'll make them save me portions..) Hence I have the time and opportunity to do some journaling again. You must be overjoyed.
First of all: yes, I made the deadline. With a 10 minute margin. Seems like me and deadlines have gotten a lot closer lately (ouch, bad pun, i know). Too close for comfort if you ask me though, I was shaking like a leaf and it took me 15 minutes of despair before I noticed that my printer wasn't working because I hadn't connected the usb-cable to my pc. Right. Let's pretend that never happened. Like the day that I thought I could heat something up in the microwave. Wrapped in aluminium. Luckily I was still able to catch the alarming, yet quite awesome sight of a miniature lightning flashing inside. Yeah. Like I said, that didn't happen.
What did happen. I got hooked up in the library. Oh, the joys of studying. I was innocently minding my business behind my laptop and a rather impressive stack of books. A guy walks by and throws a small crumple of paper on my desk. I think: gee, is it really that hard to throw it in the dustbin instead? And go back to my books. Then it catches my attention again. Because it is laying rather close to my stuff. And I see it isn't a crumple. It's actually neatly folded. At this point alarm bells start going off in my head. Sirens wailing, I try to get back to my studying. But I'm completely distracted. I don't want to pick it up because then again, it's not laying ON my stuff, and the other people studying at the table also saw him throwing that thing. I have my sense of privacy about these things. I try to ignore it and go back to studying. By then I was getting completely paranoid and thought it might be a message telling me my cleavage was showing. So eventually, a good unproductive 30 minutes later, curiosity got the best of me and I sneakily inconspicuously got a hold of the damn thing and made for the toilets. I will relay you now the message verbatim. "Hey, I like your style and you seem to be nice. If you ever feel having a coffee, send me an email. <email>"
.. HOW LONG HAS THIS GUY BEEN WATCHING ME?! Wah. I was completely paranoid the rest of the day and kept staring at all the guys to see if they were staring at me. Yeah, real smooth. I won't deny I was slightly flattered, though shock prevailed. These things actually still happen? And even more incredible: to me? I think dumbstruck would be the correct term. And also incredulous, because I hadn't had the chance to see the guy and how would I say email yes if I hadn't even talked to him? Plus, his email gave away that he was German. I know I am normally more open-minded but in my city there is a particular gap between Dutch and German students. Nobody really understands why, yet it is widely acknowledged. And imho they ARE annoying. This whole holier-than-thou attitude while hogging the best studying spots for each other and cheating spots in the row in front of the copy machine. Too stuck up to come party in the city but instead holding house parties all over the city making an incredible amount of noise at incredible early hours. (I can vouch for this. Had German roommates). It's a small city, but we clearly hang at different places. The only place we have to really co-exist is the library. Oh joy. By accident I was once too early at the library and got to experience this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuT9f2cVzT8
It was seriously violent, I got pulled along and just about managed to step aside into an empty spot. Pff. I nearly felt like proclaiming I was there early just by accident and most certainly wasn't a part of this. And I can tell you I didn't hear a word of Dutch around me. Just english and french and german. And my clothes still smelled of their cigarettes after I finally got to my spot. Ah well, what was my point again? Oh, right, Dutch and German don't mix. Unless otherwise forced. So I'm not going to go into this note. Because I really kind of have other things on my mind than guys right now and you'd have to be damn good to convince me otherwise and this just isn't cutting it. Did I already mention he's German?
I think you've already noticed I've been doing quite ok lately save for the study stress. Since even my journaling is less frazzled and more coherent (or so I'd like to think). I'm still caught between figuring out what's good for me without living like a complete nun, and being aware of what's going on with my moods without becoming paranoid at every moment of joy or lethargy. But I was able to work on my essays and think clearly again. I hope I can regain some confidence this way. I was able to experience again how much fun it all is and that I'm not half bad at it. The cruel nature of bp is though that it let's you sniff at these things without knowing how long it'll last. Having these normal things taken from me again and again has made me a bit weary. That doesn't mean I won't make the most of it while it lasts. And I'm completely appreciative now of things I didn't bother paying attention to before. Like being able to do laundry. Heck, cleaning in general. And keeping in touch with friends. And studying when you're supposed to. I guess I've grown some discipline and sensibility. Last night I was at the association's pub with my committee and even though I theoretically could get wasted since I have 2 weeks to recover, after a while I switched back to tea. It just didn't feel right. I still had fun, though it's always a bit strange to be the only moderately sober person when everyone is completely wasted. You start to feel like the weird one yourself. Sensibility really is overrated in a sense though, so I vouch to be completely insensible with new years eve.
I was going to talk about some more trivial and some more deep stuff but seeing as how DAMN long this post has already gotten, I will save this for later. It will be more positive. I promise. Anticipate and rejoice. And in case I hadn't reached you yet: Merry Christmas!
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